Saturday, February 16, 2013

The Generation App

'In 1992, Neil Postman published his book 'Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.' He defines a technopoly as a society in which technology is deified, meaning “the culture seeks its authorisation in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology”.

Yet Postman definitely is not a luddite (those who would reject the modern age), but rather advocates for people to “use technology rather than being used by it”.

"One of the most ominous consequences of Technopoly, according to Postman, is the explosion of context-free information. "The milieu in which Technopoly flourishes is one in which the tie between information and human purpose has been severed, i.e., information appears indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume and at high speeds, and disconnected from theory, meaning, or purpose."

The "information glut" leads to the breakdown of a coherent cultural narrative, he argues, for without a meaningful context, information is not only useless, but potentially dangerous. He cites the old saying that, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and therefore, to a man with a computer, everything looks like data."

Or a metal garage band made from machined aluminum, pneumatic motors and LEDs. Because we're Sentient Beings, and they're not.